In September 2025, the top one percent of earners in the United Kingdom received an average pay of 16,212 British pounds per month, compared with the bottom ten percent of earners who earned around 855 pounds a month.

In 2025, the average annual full-time earnings for the top ten percent of earners in the United Kingdom was more than 76,900 British pounds, compared with 23,990 for the bottom ten percent of earners. As of this year, the average annual earnings for all full-time employees was over 39,000 pounds, up from 37,400 pounds in the previous year. Strong wage growth continues in 2025 As of February 2025, wages in the UK were growing by approximately 5.9 percent compared with the previous year, with this falling to 5.6 percent if bonus pay is included. When adjusted for inflation, regular pay without bonuses grew by 2.1 percent, with overall pay including bonus pay rising by 1.9 percent. While UK wages have now outpaced inflation for almost two years, there was a long period between 2021 and 2023 when high inflation in the UK was rising faster than wages, one of the leading reasons behind a severe cost of living crisis at the time. UK's gender pay gap falls in 2024 For several years, the difference between average hourly earnings for men and women has been falling, with the UK's gender pay gap dropping to 13.1 percent in 2024, down from 27.5 percent in 1997. When examined by specific industry sectors, however, the discrepancy between male and female earnings can be much starker. In the financial services sector, for example, the gender pay gap was almost 30 percent, with professional, scientific and technical professions also having a relatively high gender pay gap rate of 20 percent.

Households in the bottom decile in the United Kingdom earned, on average, ****** British pounds per year in 2023/24, compared with the top decile which earned around ******* pounds per year.

In 2022/23 approximately *****million taxpayers in the United Kingdom earned between 20,000 and 29,999 British pounds in this tax year, the most of any income level, while approximately *******taxpayers in the UK earned over one million pounds.

In 2024 men aged between 50 and 59 were the highest full-time earners in the United Kingdom among different gender and age groups, with men of different ages consistently earning more than women.

Average UK household incomes taxes and benefits by household type, tenure status, household characteristics and long-term trends in income inequality.

Annual estimates of paid hours worked and earnings for UK employees by sex, and full-time and part-time.

Average weekly earnings at sector level headline estimates, Great Britain, monthly, seasonally adjusted. Monthly Wages and Salaries Survey.

Ratio of household equivalised income of the top 10 per cent of households to the income of the bottom 10 per cent of households. Ratio calculated using weekly household income adjusted to take account of differences in numbers and ages of residents. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Development strategy. Click here to find out more.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the wealthiest one percent of people in the United Kingdom controlled 71 percent of net personal wealth, while the top ten percent controlled 93 percent. The share of wealth controlled by the rich in the United Kingdom fell throughout the twentieth century, and by 1990 the richest one percent controlled 16 percent of wealth, and the richest ten percent just over half of it.

Earnings and employment statistics from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time Information (RTI), UK, NUTS 1, 2 and 3 areas and local authorities, monthly, seasonally adjusted.

Households in the Indian and White Other ethnic groups received the highest percentage of their income from employment out of all ethnic groups.

Detailed breakdown of average weekly household expenditure on goods and services in the UK. Data are shown by place of purchase, income group (deciles) and age of household reference person.

The Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data presents information on living standards in the UK based on household income measures for the financial year.

HBAI uses equivalised disposable household income as a proxy for living standards in order to allow comparisons of the living standards of different types of households (that is, income is adjusted to take into account variations in the size and composition of the households in a process known as equivalisation). A key assumption made in HBAI is that all individuals in the household benefit equally from the combined income of the household. This enables the total equivalised income of the household to be used as a proxy for the standard of living of each household member.

In line with international best practice, the income measures used in HBAI are subject to several statistical adjustments and, as such, are not always directly relatable to income amounts as they might be understood by people on a day-to-day basis. These adjustments, however, allow consistent comparison over time and across households of different sizes and compositions. HBAI uses variants of CPI inflation when estimating how incomes are changing in real terms over time.

The main data source used in this study is the Family Resources Survey (FRS), a continuous cross-sectional survey. The FRS normally has a sample of 19,000 - 20,000 UK households. The use of survey data means that HBAI estimates are subject to uncertainty, which can affect how changes should be interpreted, especially in the short term. Analysis of geographies below the regional level is not recommended from this data.

Further information and the latest publication can be found on the gov.uk HBAI webpage. The HBAI team want to provide user-friendly datasets and clearer documentation, so please contact team.hbai@dwp.gov.uk if you have any suggestions or feedback on the new harmonised datasets and documentation.

An earlier HBAI study, Institute for Fiscal Studies Households Below Average Income Dataset, 1961-1991, is held under SN 3300.

Latest Edition Information

For the 19th edition (April 2025), resamples data have been added to the study alongside supporting documentation. Main data back to 1994/95 have been updated to latest-year prices, and the documentation has been updated accordingly.

Using the HBAI files

Users should note that either 7-Zip or a recent version of WinZip is needed to unzip the HBAI download zip files, due to their size. The inbuilt Windows compression software will not handle them correctly.

Labelling of variables
Users should note that many variables across the resamples files do not include full variable or value labels. This information can be found easily in the documentation - see the Harmonised Data Variables Guide.

HBAI versions

The HBAI datasets are available in two versions at the UKDS:

1. End User Licence (EUL) (Anonymised) Datasets:

These datasets contain no names, addresses, telephone numbers, bank account details, NINOs or any personal details that can be considered disclosive under the terms of the ONS Disclosure Control guidance. Changes made to the datasets are as follows:

• All ages above 80 are instead top-coded to 80 years of age.
• The variable for the amount of Council Tax liability for the household and pensioner flags for the head and spouse have been removed.
• All amount variables have been rounded to the nearest £1.
• A very small number of large households (with 10 or more individuals) have been removed from the dataset.

2. Secure Access Datasets:

Secure Access datasets for HBAI are held under SN 7196. The Secure Access data are not subject to the same edits as the EUL version and are, therefore, more disclosive and subject to strict access conditions. They are currently only available to UK HE/FE applicants. Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the HBAI must fulfil additional requirements beyond those associated with the EUL datasets.